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Author Topic: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.  (Read 341870 times)

Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1500 on: February 02, 2021, 02:58:36 PM »
Apparently, I live in an "abnormally unpoliticized world." Or you live in a hypercharged  abnormally politicized one. Not sure which, but the scenario you outlined is precisely what happened here. Case in point, hairdressers. Initially assumed there was no way they could operate safely in a covid environment, and they were shut down. But public health was not in the business of defining "essential" businesses or closing by sectors, it was all about protocols. Hairdressers presented reasonable protocols and were allowed to reopen. To this day no case locally has ever been traced to a hairdresser. Consequently, they go about their business.
Clearly you don't, because you just said you can't provide a single citation, which fully supports the idea nobody is out there sharing the data that demonstrates which businesses are hotspots, and which aren't. All we have is rhetoric and unsupported claims.

No, clearly I do. Our "lockdown," such as it was, played out exactly as you propose it should in an  "abnormally unpoliticized world."  Even down to the specific example you proposed (hairdressers). So by your own criteria, I must live in such a world. And I agree with you. Covid has not been politicized here, and the result is a more pragmatic response.
Then why can't you provide a source for the data? Because by my criteria, the data should be readily available. That was the whole point, the entire thrust of what I was saying.

Zirunel

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1501 on: February 02, 2021, 03:29:18 PM »
Apparently, I live in an "abnormally unpoliticized world." Or you live in a hypercharged  abnormally politicized one. Not sure which, but the scenario you outlined is precisely what happened here. Case in point, hairdressers. Initially assumed there was no way they could operate safely in a covid environment, and they were shut down. But public health was not in the business of defining "essential" businesses or closing by sectors, it was all about protocols. Hairdressers presented reasonable protocols and were allowed to reopen. To this day no case locally has ever been traced to a hairdresser. Consequently, they go about their business.
Clearly you don't, because you just said you can't provide a single citation, which fully supports the idea nobody is out there sharing the data that demonstrates which businesses are hotspots, and which aren't. All we have is rhetoric and unsupported claims.

No, clearly I do. Our "lockdown," such as it was, played out exactly as you propose it should in an  "abnormally unpoliticized world."  Even down to the specific example you proposed (hairdressers). So by your own criteria, I must live in such a world. And I agree with you. Covid has not been politicized here, and the result is a more pragmatic response.
Then why can't you provide a source for the data? Because by my criteria, the data should be readily available. That was the whole point, the entire thrust of what I was saying.

Yeah, the data are shared, daily, they aren't hidden.  And they are acted on (e.g. hairdressers).

 But I agree, I can provide no user-friendly historical summary, and that is irritating. Not necessary for ongoing test-and-trace, but it would be helpful for debate on web forums!

Actually, I have noticed every jurisdiction reports things in different ways, can be frustrating and makes it very hard to compare much of anything
« Last Edit: February 02, 2021, 03:38:37 PM by Zirunel »

Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1502 on: February 02, 2021, 03:41:07 PM »
Apparently, I live in an "abnormally unpoliticized world." Or you live in a hypercharged  abnormally politicized one. Not sure which, but the scenario you outlined is precisely what happened here. Case in point, hairdressers. Initially assumed there was no way they could operate safely in a covid environment, and they were shut down. But public health was not in the business of defining "essential" businesses or closing by sectors, it was all about protocols. Hairdressers presented reasonable protocols and were allowed to reopen. To this day no case locally has ever been traced to a hairdresser. Consequently, they go about their business.
Clearly you don't, because you just said you can't provide a single citation, which fully supports the idea nobody is out there sharing the data that demonstrates which businesses are hotspots, and which aren't. All we have is rhetoric and unsupported claims.

No, clearly I do. Our "lockdown," such as it was, played out exactly as you propose it should in an  "abnormally unpoliticized world."  Even down to the specific example you proposed (hairdressers). So by your own criteria, I must live in such a world. And I agree with you. Covid has not been politicized here, and the result is a more pragmatic response.
Then why can't you provide a source for the data? Because by my criteria, the data should be readily available. That was the whole point, the entire thrust of what I was saying.

Yeah, the data are shared, daily, they aren't hidden.  And they are acted on (e.g. hairdressers).

 But I agree, there is no user-friendly historical summary, and that is irritating. Not necessary for ongoing test-and-trace, but it would be helpful for debate on web forums!

Actually, I have noticed every jurisdiction reports things in different ways, makes it very hard to compare
I'd be interested in a daily example. I'm not sure exactly what kind of information you're talking about.

Agree with the rest, though I think it's a lot more important than fodder for web debates. One additional frustrating thing is they also present the wrong information. One we've discussed in this thread is hospital capacities. Capacity at the state level can be useful for judging trends, but it's a horrible measure for determining whether there's a critical shortfall, because 100% of hospitals at 75% capacity isn't an immediate concern, but 50% of hospitals at 100% capacity and 50% at 50% is a crisis, even through the average is the same. Generally, I see a lot of state-level data, and there are a few databases that show capacities at individual hospitals, but what's not being widely disseminated is the vital middle step. And that leads to a lot of unnecessary panic or unwarranted dismissals, because we can't really distinguish whether it's just LA that has a crisis, or if it's a widespread issue in many areas of the state or country, based on the news or what public health is saying.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2021, 03:43:33 PM by Pat »

Zirunel

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1503 on: February 02, 2021, 04:57:13 PM »

I'd be interested in a daily example. I'm not sure exactly what kind of information you're talking about.

Okay, well as I said the updates are still dominated by ferry exposures and hardly typical of the past year or even the past few months, but if you just want an example of what our daily alerts look like, here's today's:

http://www.nshealth.ca/covid-exposures?title=&field_covid_exposure_zone_value=All&order=field_covid_exposure_zone&sort=asc

Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1504 on: February 02, 2021, 07:24:17 PM »

I'd be interested in a daily example. I'm not sure exactly what kind of information you're talking about.

Okay, well as I said the updates are still dominated by ferry exposures and hardly typical of the past year or even the past few months, but if you just want an example of what our daily alerts look like, here's today's:

http://www.nshealth.ca/covid-exposures?title=&field_covid_exposure_zone_value=All&order=field_covid_exposure_zone&sort=asc
That's fairly useful, but to use an analogy, it's more comparable to active storm warnings than a database of historical climate data. Both have their purposes, but you can't use one in place of the other. What's lacking is the background data to make informed mid- or long-term decisions.

It's not related to the broader conversation, but there are some real issues with the presentation of the data -- there are some conflicting details between the header information, what's said in the table, and what the detail pages say. Note I'm not saying it's worthless or trying to dismiss the whole thing -- this is definitely a case where quickly getting a lot of information out is in conflict with being polished and fully consistent, and the former is far more important. I'm just bringing it up because in situations like this the perfect can be the enemy of the good, because there's a tendency for people jump on minor flaws, and people in public positions tend to be very sensitive to negative attention. Which often leads to sources of data like this being pulled, or never published in the first because, because of fear of negative attention. And that's not a good thing. That may be one of the reasons why so little data is available to the public, aside from more self-serving reasons.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1505 on: February 02, 2021, 10:27:15 PM »
Shutting down large events like concerts and sports seems justified. They're rare (though that could be selection bias), but when a SSE happens at one of them, they lead to huge numbers of cases (600+ on average).
Yes. Though here in Victoria, our state Little Athletics has been shut down - but the Australian Tennis Open is continuing, "limited" to 30,000 visitors a day. "Based on public health advice." Ahem.

Quote
Nursing homes and prisons are responsible for a ridiculous number of SSE cases. (More than 40%.) Why aren't we focusing huge numbers of resources on these two institutions, and paying much less attention to bars and hair salons?
Essentially it's a large number of people crammed together indoors - and almost all of them with immune systems weakened by poor food, lack of exercise and sunlight. Improving conditions for them would reduce covid (and other) infections, be decent and humane - but take some time (rebuilding shitty old buildings) and cost a lot of money. Much quicker and cheaper (for the government) to just close hairdressers.

Quote
Corona-chan likes refrigeration. That's interesting, because the last study I saw that tried to explain why areas like SE Asia and Africa had lower incidence rates dismissed temperature as a factor, and attributed it more to things like humidity. Not that it's a direct contradiction, because high and low temperatures don't necessarily have opposite effects, but it's something worth exploring further.
It may simply be that every refrigerated space is also a confined space - and fans drive the air around. And of course chilling preserves all living organisms for longer, including viruses. So you have cool air preserving a virus and a bunch of fans spreading it evenly through that confined space.

As I understand it, when the West still worked on chemical and biological weapons, one of the issues they had was achieving aerosol dispersion - it's not use killing one guy 100 times and someone right next to him is fine. They wanted to spread the dangerous materials evenly through the air to maximise their number of victims. So when thinking of something like covid, think like an NBC warrior/war criminal - if you wanted to maximise the number of people affected, where would you hit them?

Then you think, well, large coolrooms are a good bet, so are places where people are confined together with aircon recycling the air, but outdoors in the sunshine spread out won't get you many victims.

Or as someone else put it, if you can smell their farts, they can give you covid.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2021, 10:32:21 PM by Kyle Aaron »
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Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1506 on: February 02, 2021, 11:19:32 PM »
Nursing homes and prisons are responsible for a ridiculous number of SSE cases. (More than 40%.) Why aren't we focusing huge numbers of resources on these two institutions, and paying much less attention to bars and hair salons?
Essentially it's a large number of people crammed together indoors - and almost all of them with immune systems weakened by poor food, lack of exercise and sunlight. Improving conditions for them would reduce covid (and other) infections, be decent and humane - but take some time (rebuilding shitty old buildings) and cost a lot of money. Much quicker and cheaper (for the government) to just close hairdressers.
Trying to fixing major and complex social ills because there's a theoretical chance they might provide some minor benefit in a current crisis sounds like a terrible idea. It's like trying to save people from a burning building by creating a committee to revise zoning laws.

How about: Double the pay of all nursing home employees and prison guards, but require them to spend three days in mandatory, supervised, on-site isolation with daily tests and symptom checks before being introduced into the general population. Then keep them on site for two weeks, followed by two weeks off, and repeat. Use prefab housing if needed for both the isolation period and the two week stint. Set up seven separate receiving buildings for all deliveries, one for each day. All goods received during a day are delivered to that day's warehouse, where they sit untouched for seven days, and only then are they taken out, sterilized, and used.

Or whatever. This isn't a serious set of proposals, but a simple illustration that nursing homes and prisons are contained, institutional environments. It's quite possible to thoroughly lock them down, without locking down the whole world. It would be hella expensive, but also a hell of lot cheaper than the ridiculously expensive pork they passed under the guise of coronavirus relief

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1507 on: February 02, 2021, 11:57:43 PM »
It's an interesting fact that, even with the ~650 deaths in nursing homes in my state of Victoria, overall the country of Australia to end September had 1,000 less nursing home deaths than the same period the previous year.

The public attributed this to lockdowns, but the health department attributed this to improved vaccination (ordinary flu vax, which Australia pushed hard with in 2020 because deaths had been growing and they didn't want to face a double-pandemic) and infection control. Minor stuff like the workers wearing proper masks, gloving up when changing bed linen, that sort of thing. It didn't involve much more spending at all, really.

There's some basic shit that's not being done. But that's always the way.

What I just like to point out is that the environments where the government had complete control over what was happening is where we had the highest rate of infection and deaths. It's a bit uncomfortable for those advocating for greater government control over our lives.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2021, 11:59:23 PM by Kyle Aaron »
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1508 on: February 03, 2021, 06:12:55 AM »
Nursing homes and prisons are responsible for a ridiculous number of SSE cases. (More than 40%.) Why aren't we focusing huge numbers of resources on these two institutions, and paying much less attention to bars and hair salons?
Essentially it's a large number of people crammed together indoors - and almost all of them with immune systems weakened by poor food, lack of exercise and sunlight. Improving conditions for them would reduce covid (and other) infections, be decent and humane - but take some time (rebuilding shitty old buildings) and cost a lot of money. Much quicker and cheaper (for the government) to just close hairdressers.
Trying to fixing major and complex social ills because there's a theoretical chance they might provide some minor benefit in a current crisis sounds like a terrible idea. It's like trying to save people from a burning building by creating a committee to revise zoning laws.

How about: Double the pay of all nursing home employees and prison guards, but require them to spend three days in mandatory, supervised, on-site isolation with daily tests and symptom checks before being introduced into the general population. Then keep them on site for two weeks, followed by two weeks off, and repeat. Use prefab housing if needed for both the isolation period and the two week stint. Set up seven separate receiving buildings for all deliveries, one for each day. All goods received during a day are delivered to that day's warehouse, where they sit untouched for seven days, and only then are they taken out, sterilized, and used.

Or whatever. This isn't a serious set of proposals, but a simple illustration that nursing homes and prisons are contained, institutional environments. It's quite possible to thoroughly lock them down, without locking down the whole world. It would be hella expensive, but also a hell of lot cheaper than the ridiculously expensive pork they passed under the guise of coronavirus relief
Just to use my local state prison as an example, they can hold just < 3000 inmates and T&R about 100-200 per week Monday-Thursday. New intakes (but not transfers) are segregated for 14-17 days in weekly Monday-Thursday batches (so if you come in on a Monday you get a few extra days), but there isn't enough room (not enough separate units) to do every day individually. Transfers have initial quarantine done at first site of processing.

As for having personnel remain on-site in the secure compound for extended periods, that would require huge increases to the supply chain. There is no room (by design) for any storage of personal food items for staff beyond a self-brought 8-16 hour supply. As you said, changing this would be prohibitively expensive, but it would also lead to many potential security risks. As is, many of the security personnel (but not support, such as medical) live on the outer grounds of the campus beyond the secured compound in a pair of small mobile home parks. If these were expanded with some added options, it might be possible to do something like you suggest, but beyond costs, you would then have to find qualified people to do these jobs that want to put up with those conditions, and recruiting from retired submarine crews only goes so far.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2021, 07:23:45 AM by HappyDaze »

Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1509 on: February 03, 2021, 08:46:06 AM »
Just to use my local state prison as an example, they can hold just < 3000 inmates and T&R about 100-200 per week Monday-Thursday. New intakes (but not transfers) are segregated for 14-17 days in weekly Monday-Thursday batches (so if you come in on a Monday you get a few extra days), but there isn't enough room (not enough separate units) to do every day individually. Transfers have initial quarantine done at first site of processing.

As for having personnel remain on-site in the secure compound for extended periods, that would require huge increases to the supply chain. There is no room (by design) for any storage of personal food items for staff beyond a self-brought 8-16 hour supply. As you said, changing this would be prohibitively expensive, but it would also lead to many potential security risks. As is, many of the security personnel (but not support, such as medical) live on the outer grounds of the campus beyond the secured compound in a pair of small mobile home parks. If these were expanded with some added options, it might be possible to do something like you suggest, but beyond costs, you would then have to find qualified people to do these jobs that want to put up with those conditions, and recruiting from retired submarine crews only goes so far.
Did you miss the part where I said it wasn't a serious proposal? It was a silly set of extreme measures designed to illustrate that it's possible to selectively target the most vulnerable populations, as opposed to doing the exact opposite and targeting the entire rest of the population and not doing much of anything special with the vulnerable populations. Well, except the part about forcing sick patients into nursing homes. That was a targeted measure. We should definitely make Pol Po... I mean Andrew Cuomo the next president!

Also, I never said it would be prohibitively expensive. Expensive yes, but far less so than than the extra year's entire federal budget they spent on mostly unrelated measures. Which is insane, because when there's an economic downturn, especially when it's the government itself that's crippling businesses, it's not the time to increase governmental spending. The Keynesian rationalization that we need to spend big or things would be even worse has been disproved by every previous recession. They should have steeply cut federal spending to free up money for the productive private sector. But never let a crisis go to waste, eh?

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1510 on: February 03, 2021, 10:15:58 AM »
The other thing to keep in mind with cold rooms at grocers and what not is that it does wear down the workers that are in there a good chunk of the day.  Even with warm clothes and moving around it takes a toll on you and odds are your immune system is a little lower due to fatigue.

I only worked the one month at the meat warehouse but it was 8 hours a day in either the cooler room or the actual refrigerated area.  So close to zero or sub zero with union breaks and occasional run to the mincing room to get the fancy cuts for the fancy restaurants.  Didn't help it was graveyard (10pm to 6:30 am) but if I'd stayed there longer I could feel it taking a toll.

Zirunel

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1511 on: February 03, 2021, 12:10:43 PM »

That's fairly useful, but to use an analogy, it's more comparable to active storm warnings than a database of historical climate data. Both have their purposes, but you can't use one in place of the other. What's lacking is the background data to make informed mid- or long-term decisions.

That is precisely what I was trying to tell you. In this case, the data are out there, but they are actuals only, giving a two-week snapshot. Fine for the intended purpose of test-and-trace, but without an historical summary, not so good for seeing trends and patterns.

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1512 on: February 04, 2021, 06:37:12 PM »
The average lifespan of a human is 72 years as a global average.
It's 76 in the USA.

Nursing home patients average 85+.
That's 13 years beyond the world average and 9 years beyond the national average.

It's utterly insane to permanently damage the lives of children and shatter the economy to
allegedly "protect" this group of people who have statistically already won the longevity game.

In fact, I'd bet the majority of that group would have preferred to spend 2020 with their loved ones - even if it meant "risking" death - than live isolated, controlled and powerless.

But hey, maybe it all makes sense if you're wearing your double face diapers. Or is it triple now? So hard to keep up with you fucking worthless "science" morons.

Zirunel

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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1513 on: February 04, 2021, 07:40:10 PM »
The average lifespan of a human is 72 years as a global average.
It's 76 in the USA.

If by "human" you mean "male," then okay, 76 years life expectancy in the USA.

If you expand "human" to include females in the USA as well (just a thought, you might want to consider it), then no. Gonna have to bump it up a few years.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2021, 07:56:06 PM by Zirunel »

Pat
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Re: Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.
« Reply #1514 on: February 06, 2021, 12:44:45 PM »
MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace floats the idea of using domestic drone strikes against American citizens who protest the covid-19 lockdowns.

https://politicodailynewss.com/watch-msnbc-panel-floats-drone-strikes-on-americans-for-incitement/

And she's not just a talking head divorced from reality, because she served as the communications director for George W, and was a senior advisor for McCain during his presidential run.

The real world has become a Paranoia scenario.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2021, 12:47:24 PM by Pat »